Web mashups have become increasingly popular on the World Wide Web. A web mashup refers to a web application that combines content from multiple sources. A web mashup may include or provide, but does not necessarily include or provide, the following features. A web mashup typically includes web widgets that each retrieves, processes, and presents content from a respective source. Each web widget may communicate with the respective source via an application programming interface (API) specified by the respective source. Further, the web widgets may also interact with one another to retrieve and/or present the content.
Web mashups represent a powerful paradigm of web development, permitting a user having minimal knowledge of software development to rapidly create customized web applications using existing sources of content. A user may create a new web mashup by placing one or more web widgets within a blank design canvas representing the web mashup. The user may then save the web mashup and publish the web mashup to a server for other users to access.